The Live Ghost of Hogwarts
by Jamberine
Summary: "Love sought is good, but given unsought is better." Second submission for The QLFFC.


**A/N: hello everyone, and welcome to my second submission for The QLFFC. **

**The prompt, this time, was to write about my interpretation of a set of lyrics -**

**"Can i be? Was i there?**

**it felt so crystal i the air. **

**I still want to drown whenever you leave. **

**Please teach me gently how to breathe."**

**Word count: approx 3030 words**

**C'mon, those lyrics just had to turn into a romance! I couldnt resist. :)**

**Anyhoo, please forgive the terrible writing. I had to write this whole thing on my phone, as my computer was hacked and i had to give in a submission before it would have been able to be fixed.**

-0-0-0-0-

Hermione felt a tremor pass through her frame as she gazed out of the window. She was at Hogwarts, provided with a temporary room since her explosive appearance over the Quidditch pitch the day before. Madam Pomfrey had told her that she had appeared out of nowhere, and dropped like a dead weight, nearly ten feet from the ground at the far side of the pitch. Luckily, the matron had already been on the grounds due to an unfortunate Hufflepuff practice session.

Hermione's hair fell lank around her frame, dripping across her back and shoulders. She gripped herself tighter, as if the memories could be squashed out of her as long as she squeezed herself tight enough.

Since waking up, returned to her own world, she had wondered if she had, perhaps, dreamt it all, but she would then remind herself that her dreams were never so vivid, never so lucid.

Hermione prided herself in her sense of logic, so to question her sanity, to question the idea of never having been there at all - of having had a psychotic episode - only passed her thoughts for mere seconds before they were banish

The only conclusion she could then draw up for herself, was that she had truly been there.

Six months. She had been there six months, with only one person to communicate with. A person with whom she had never thought she would become attached to, and yet...

And yet, she couldn't forget him, nor send him into exile in a dark corner of her mind, no. He was there with her, clamouringfor her attention every minute since she had returned. He was there in the walls, the style of the windows, and the lush grounds that threatened her with their joyful greenery.

He was as much a part of Hogwarts as it was a part of him, and her mind could hardly envision a future with him not prowling the corridors and barking at students like they were the bane of his existence.

-0-0-0-0-

She had been here for three days.

Three days in which she had scoured every inch of the castle for a person that would talk to her, recognise her, see her. She had long ago deducted that she was, for all intents and purposes, undetectable. She could hear herself, touch objects and feel them as they brushed against her skin, but live beings were completely oblivious to her existence. Her hands passed through them as they walked by her in the castle corridors. They carried on as if she wasn't pleading in their ears for someone to just turn and look at her.

At first, she had thought herself dead. Upon later revision, and a particularly hard wall collision later, Hermione had discovered that, unlike a ghost, she was unable to pass through solid stone objects.

On her first day, she had been in near hysterics. She had landed smack bang in the middle of the great hall; dirty and ruffled, and completely unaware that she had been sucked nearly sixteen years into the past. When she gathered her wits about her, she noticed the fact that no one had reacted to her sudden appearance. Curious, she looked up to the head table and immediately came to the conclusion that she had been sucked some time into the past. Each and every staff member was, in some way, younger; be it Dumbledore's slight flecking of dark red at his chin or hooch's platinum blonde, and surprisingly long hair.

She had spent the rest of her afternoon trying to gain the attention of anyone and everyone that crossed her path, only to be ignored time and time again. She had pleaded with them, and when that didn't happen, she deliberately moved objects, within plain sight of anyone watching. Peeves had received a particularly nasty rebuke that evening from the Bloody Baron.

Thankfully, she had been able to sneak into the library on her second day, to thumb through as many books as she could on the subject of her dilemma. None, so far, had held any sort of useful information. Had she been somehow cursed to be like this? She couldn't remember what she was doing before she arrived, so it was possible. If that was so, then how was she to go about reversing the effects? Hermione's brain thrummed with questions and deliberations, none of them bringing an iota of relief to her frazzled nerves.

On the third day, she found herself near out of ideas. She went to the library again, trusting in the fact that the answer to her problem lay somewhere within the old tomes. By the time lunch rolled around, she had grown frustrated, and had let her head thump down onto the open pages with a growl.

She lifted her head eventually, tipped back in her chair, and sighed hopelessly, her motivation waning. She turned to look out the window and pressed her head into the glass, exhaling heavily, which led to the window fogging up.

Thoughts trailing, Hermione idly drew a small sad face into the misted window, and let her hand drop.

"Peeves!" A voice barked right next to her.

Hermione jumped in her seat, her head snapping up, only to find an angry Severus Snape staring right at her, ugly and whippet-thin as always. He looked younger - so much younger than she thought he would be at this age. As far as she knew, it was 1984. Snape, in her time, had looked in his early sixties, and yet, the man standing before her couldn't yet be past twenty-five. Her eyes widened in alarm as his nostrils flared, a sure sign that he was growing impatient and aggravated. It surely was Snape, if his mannerisms were anything to go by... But then, that would mean that she had either grossly overestimated his age, or the man had been taking anti-ageing potions for most of his adult life.

"Show yourself, peeves," Snape barked again, seeming to grow impossibly taller above Hermione, making her shrink in her seat, despite knowing he wasn't able to see her.

She regarded him warily, wondering what on earth had given her away. She had been careful to come to a quiet part of the library, where students were unlikely to gather in groups, and had since watched for anyone passing by so she could avoid turning pages in front of them.

She turned and settled lower into her seat - ready to spring away in case Snape decided to cause a scene - when the misty sad face on the window caught her attention. Instantly, her head snapped over to the professor again, who was now holding her book and reading the same page she had stopped at, and gave him a curious look. Could he...

She quickly turned to the window again, and blew on the surface, before leaning back and writing, 'Can you see this?'

She turned to look at him again, hoping he would look at the window once more. When he tucked the book under his arm and lifted his head again, Hermione half lifted herself from her seat in anticipation. Snape became rigid as a board as his eyes trained on the paned glass behind her.

His features were hard as he rumbled, "If this is a joke, peeves, it is in poor taste. You seem to be running out of ideas."

A hysterical bark of laughter broke from Hermione's lips as she turned back to the glass, breathing and writing on the opaque surface once more, 'Not peeves. Hermione. Trapped. Help.'

-0-0-0-0

From that day forwards, Snape had attempted to help Hermione to become detectable again. She hadn't told him that she was from the future - that would just have been stupid. She had already endangered the lives of everyone she knew by introducing herself to him, but she felt the situation was dire enough to introduce herself and socialise with him. In any case, she doubted she could do much harm in this time. By 1984, Voldemort had already been defeated for nearly three years, and so the death eaters had all but disappeared. Snape, for the most part, was incognito, and so Hermione felt a little less pressed to guard everything she communicated to him.

Six months passed, and by that time, they had learnt little of her plight. By this point, Snape had seen fit to bring Dumbledore into the fold, and, as usual, the old, doddering fool has been nothing but cryptic and unhelpful. Both Hermione and Snape found their frustration with him to be something of common interest, and so the seed of camaraderie had been planted.

Despite herself, in the fourth month, Hermione felt herself start to feel an itch.

She knew this feeling all too well, and on the day she realisedthat she was staring at him while he lectured a class of seventh years, doe-eyed and appreciative, she had gone into a panic. She couldn't! This was Snape; a man known for his bad temper and mean spirit. How on earth has she started to moon after such a foul creature?

When she turned to look at him once more, commanding, engaging the room, like a dark lord over his people, she felt herself immediately soften. A mean gargoyle of a man, he surely was, but there was an underlying softness to his spirit that was utterly vulnerable. A softness, she understood, that he guarded fiercely. And it was for that reason, she realised, that she found herself starting to feel a rather alarming level of squishy things for the man.

When she came to terms with her feelings, Hermione questioned whether she should cut ties with Snape. Her emotions were obviously out of control, and she was endangering the future by becoming attached to the man. As a result, she avoided him at all costs.

That lasted for three days.

On the fourth, she couldn't help but make her way down to the dungeons and watch him as he taught. By the end of the lecture, she had made herself known, and Snape had snapped at her for leaving. She had been taken aback by his ire, and it took her until the next afternoon to realise that his anger was a response borne out of worry. From that day on, she spent most of her time with Snape, and all but let her feelings run wild with fancy.

She hadn't acted on them. How could she? Their relationship was doomed either way. He couldn't touch her or see her, and if she ever became visible again, she would be forced to find her way back to her own time.

Starting a relationship with him, if he was at all interested, would be like kicking a small dog. How could she live with herself, knowing she was effectively stringing the poor man along until she found her way back into the future?

And now, here she was, in the year two thousand, with Severus Snape, a man with whom was now forty, lecturing in the very same dungeons that he had been sixteen years ago.

He knew she had returned, of that Hermione was aware. He was one of the advisors called in when Hermione had made her sudden appearance over the Quidditch pitch yesterday afternoon, but apart from administering a set of potions to her, Snape hadn't contacted her at all.

-0-0-0-0

The next morning, madam Pomfrey had insisted that Hermione join the staff at the head table for breakfast.

one to run from fear, for fearful of seeing Snape, she surely was, Hermione joined the Hogwarts teachers for the first meal of the day. She poked her head into the great hall at first, apprehensive of watching eyes, and feeling a distinctive spotlight effect as she quietly made her way over to the only available seat, one that had rather suspiciously been left vacant next to the very man she was afraid to see. As Hermione moved to sit down, she caught the eye of the headmaster, who gave her a twinkle and a smile, before returning to his haggis. Hermione felt a twitch form in the corner of her eye in response.

Snape said nothing as she sat down. Hermione had expected as much, but never had she experienced such a deafeningly loud silence.

Hermione closed her eyes and let her chin drop to her chest, suddenly feeling claustrophobic. She had to bite her lips as, all of a sudden; the entirety of what had happened to her became arealisation. What could he possibly think of her, knowing what he does now? She hoped that he, at least, looked upon their time together with some fondness, but judging by the arctic response she had received earlier; she was fresh out of luck.

Finally, Hermione swallowed, gathered her wits about her, and said softly, "good morning."

Almost as if he'd been stung, Snape sprung from his chair, the wooden legs scraping along the stone floor as he turned from the table and swooped towards the teachers' entrance.

Hermione gaped after him, feeling both ways shocked and hurt as the love of her life all but told her to leave him well enough alone.

Her cheeks burned as she turned to look at the rest of the staff, hyper aware of their shocked gazes upon her, before she, too leapt from the table and hurried out of the hall.

Snape was just turning towards the dungeons when Hermione caught up with him, panting, "Wait, please, let me explain."

The man snorted and didn't stop his brusque pace. "There is nothing for you to explain, Miss Granger. Kindly stop following me, before I am forced to take drastic measures against your person."

Hermione's hand shot out and caught his robes in a hard grip. She yanked on his sleeve, just hard enough to finally make him look at her in aggravation, his dark eyes burning. "Oh, stop it. I just want to talk to you. Explain that I had no choice in what happened -"

Snape lurched to a halt, almost immediately, and turned on her. Hermione's face morphed into an expression of wide-eyed fear as the older man's hand raised, and pushed her hard into the corridor wall.

"Don't you dare speak to me as if you have any right to," he hissed. "You've played me for a fool, once, long ago. You will not do it again."

And then, almost as quickly as he had attacked, Snape turned away from her.

Hermione stared hopelessly at his back, feeling her lips start to wobble as her emotions bubbled up in her chest.

He continued stalking down the hall, his robes fanning wide behind him in a way that was utterly entrancing.

"I didn't want to leave," Hermione called to him.

It took him a while to slow, but eventually he turned around and looked at her.

Her eyes shone at him as she said, "if I could have stayed, I would have. I hoped almost every day that someone would come to tell me that there was no way back."

She paused for a moment, only to swallow her emotions back down, before continuing. "I had no part in my leaving, yesterday." She immediately shook her head. "The day I left in 1984, I mean. It simply happened, with no warning. I don't know why or how. It just did." She paused again, giving him an opening to speak.

When he didn't, she repeated quietly, "I didn't want to leave."

He stared at her for a long time, his expression stony. Hermione knew him well, but he had changed in the last sixteen years. His expressions were trapped now, and she had no clue what was going on through his head.

Eventually, quietly, he spoke, "Come here."

She all but rushed to him, and when they stood close together once more, Hermione realised that he had grown and broadened with age. He was even more beautiful now than he had been when he was twenty-four.

Snape stared hard at Hermione, "don't look away from me. I'll know you're lying if you do." Hermione swallowed nervously, but nodded nonetheless. He spoke again, "none of this was your plan?"

Hermione quickly shook her head.

His dark eyes studied her critically for a moment, before he spoke once more. "You were as clueless to what was happening as I was?"

"Yes. Of course."

"And all of what you just said was true?"

Pausing, not because she had lied, but because she was uncomfortable to be revisiting such a personal confession, Hermione eventually nodded. "Yes."

He stared her down for a moment longer, before his whole body seemed to sag with exhaustion.

His eyes dropped from her own, as his hand raised to pinch at the bridge of his large nose. When Snape spoke again, his voice was hoarse. "I thought you- I thought that you had..."

All in one moment, realisation rushed up on Hermione, and she came to the conclusion that Snape had thought their time together to be the result of some sinister plot against him. Her hand reached out and gently grasped at his spidery fingers.

"No," she whispered. "I could never do anything to deliberately hurt you, Severus."

He didn't look her in the eye, but instead stared at their entwined hands. "We have much to talk about."

Hermione's lips turned up a fraction. "Of course."

His eyes then turned up to her face, dark and piercing. "You will not be forgiven quickly."

Her smile fell. "I'll do what I can to make it up to you."

"As you should," he spoke imperiously. He didn't let go of her hand, despite his ornery words.

Together, they both turned down the hall, making their way to the dungeons.

"Severus?" Hermione spoke quietly.

His head turned down and to the side so that he could study her."Mm?"

"I really am sorry for what happened."

His dark eyes seemed to glitter at her words. Slowly, he dropped her hand and replied, "I know, witch. I know."


End file.
